Benue Cries, Tinubu Promises, Killings Continue
By Kabir Abdulsalam,
When President Bola Ahmed Tinubu landed in Benue on June 18, 2025, he was not welcomed with cheers or celebration. He was met by a landscape soaked in blood and sorrow.
In Yelewata and Daudu communities of The Food Basket of the Nation, over 100 people had been butchered, homes turned to ashes, and families uprooted from land they had called home for generations. Barely two days after that visit, violence returned—this time to Wannune in Tarka Local Government Area.
The pattern is painfully familiar: massacre, followed by condolence visits, media briefings, and empty pledges. And then, silence. Until the next round of killings. Benue’s tragedy is no longer local. It is a mirror reflecting a nation that has grown numb to the routine of bloodshed.
Nigeria’s security crisis has moved beyond sporadic outbursts; it is now entrenched—systemic, recurring, and terrifying in its predictability. Seven years ago, then-President Muhammadu Buhari stood on similar ground.
He had come to console grieving families in Logo and Guma after 70 villagers were killed in the New Year’s Day attacks of 2018. He came with promises. Yet, the killings never ceased. The bullets never stopped flying. And the graves kept multiplying.
President Tinubu may have spoken more frankly during his recent visit, but his words echoed the same tired script. Nigerians have heard it all before. Strong words. Somber meetings. New committees. And still, nothing changes.
This time, however, someone broke the ritual of polite silence. Professor James Ayatse, the Tor Tiv and Chairman of the Benue State Council of Traditional Rulers, stood before the president and refused to play along.
He rejected the lazy labels of “herder-farmer clashes” and “communal disputes.” He spoke with the clarity that many in power have lacked. “It is not herder-farmers clashes, it is not communal clashes, it is not reprisal attacks. This is a calculated, well-planned, full-scale genocidal invasion and land-grabbing campaign.”
The Tor Tiv’s words pierced the fog of official denial. His voice rose not only against the killers, but against a system that refuses to name the crime and confront the truth. His rebuke also extended to Governor Hyacinth Alia, a fellow Tiv man, who downplayed the crisis as either the work of foreigners or local conflicts.
The monarch’s frustration was as raw as it was justified. If there is no quarrel, what exactly is the government pretending to mediate? President Tinubu met with stakeholders. He gave orders. He assembled a new committee of elders. Yet, the cycle is unbroken.
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The blood in Wannune had barely dried before the police dismissed the attack, calling it the act of a lone gunman and branding social media reports as misleading. But to survivors, these distinctions mean nothing. When your village is in flames, it matters little whether the attackers are bandits, terrorists, or so-called herders.
So long as leaders continue to mislabel the violence, real solutions will remain out of reach. So long as blame is shifted to the victims, the perpetrators grow bolder. And justice continues to walk on crutches—if it walks at all.
In a previous article of yours truly, titled: “Tinubu, Benue and When Empathy Comes the Funeral,” I warned about the futility of visits without vision, sympathy without structure. That warning has now become a grim reality. Worsening the situation is the abysmal funding of Nigeria’s internal security systems.
The Minister of Interior, Dr. Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, recently described the country’s security budget as “a national embarrassment” and “a joke.” He questioned how any serious nation could protect over 4,000 kilometres of borders with less than N10 billion allocated to capital projects for border security.
“There is intelligence, but there’s no structure to make sense of it,” he warned. “That’s a dangerous place to be.” He is not alone in sounding the alarm. Nigeria’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, has called for urgent physical border barriers similar to those constructed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
Our porous frontiers—lined with over 1,400 illegal entry points—have become highways for foreign fighters, arms smugglers, and extremist ideologies. Yet, only a fraction of the official posts are equipped with modern surveillance tools. The result? Violence flows into places like Benue unchecked, and communities are left to fend for themselves while the state looks the other way.
What is happening in Benue is not a flare-up. It is a firestorm. And it threatens the very foundation of the Nigerian state. The graves in Guma, Logo, Daudu, and Wannune may lie in the Middle Belt, but their shadows stretch across the country. Enough of press statements. Enough of temporary deployments.
What Nigeria needs now is political will backed by resources. Truth-telling backed by structure. Localised intelligence backed by lasting reform. Until that happens, presidential visits will continue to offer only fleeting comfort.
And the Nigerian state will remain what it has become to so many grieving communities—a face that shows up late, and leaves too soon.
*Kabir Abdulsalam writes from Abuja. He can be reached via: [email protected].*
